


Can't Sleep Without You

by msred



Series: Starting Over [24]
Category: American (US) Actor RPF, Chris Evans (actor) - Fandom
Genre: Actors, Airports, F/M, Long-Distance Relationship, Marriage, Reunions, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-01 13:33:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20815979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msred/pseuds/msred
Summary: "We’ve got a problem. I can’t sleep. And if I don’t start getting some sleep, my ass is gonna get fired. My brain is not working properly and I can’t remember lines for shit. And I’m pretty sure I’m being kind of a dick to people. Plus," he paused, "it’s your fault.”





	Can't Sleep Without You

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of fluff, not a lot of plot. (Although, you could argue - I would - that it helps to further the overall plot and/or development of the series as a whole, if nothing else because it gives context and shows the growth of the relationship.)

_ 18 months together, 2 months married (August, Year 3) _

I grinned down at my phone where it vibrated at my elbow on the end table. It had been almost two years since the first time Chris's name ever popped up on my phone, and I still got butterflies every time. Our time together and the relationship - the life - we'd built had done nothing to lessen that so far, and I hoped it never would. “Hi!”

“We’ve got a problem.” His tone was light enough that I knew nothing was _ really _ wrong, but not so light that I didn’t think there was at least a morsel of something real under the manufactured drama. 

“Well hello husband, it’s so nice to hear your voice," I teased. 

I heard him take a deep breath on the other end before answering softly, a little guilty and a lot sweet, “Hi baby.”

“Hi," I raised my voice by half an octave and drew out the word, almost making it two syllables, then went on, half-serious. "So. You’ve got a problem?”

“_ We’ve _ got a problem,” he corrected. Again, he wasn't serious enough to worry me, but it did surprise me that he hadn't dropped his little act by that point. 

“Okay. What’s that?”

“I can’t sleep.”

I dropped my head back onto the cushions behind me, rolling my eyes and pressing my tongue into my cheek. “Chris, my darling, I love you more than I can put into words, but why is that a ‘we’ problem?” I looked across the room at the dogs in their giant bed, Millie watching me and listening with one ear slightly cocked and Dodger sleeping with his chin on her back, and shook my head, almost as if to say _ Do you believe your father? _

“Because," he asserted, "if I don’t start getting some sleep, my ass is gonna get fired. My brain is not working properly and I can’t remember lines for shit. And I’m pretty sure I’m being kind of a dick to people. Plus," he paused, "it’s your fault.”

I sat up straighter, and even though he couldn't see me, he could probably _ hear _ my eyes narrowing and my eyebrows lowering. He liked to tell me regularly how 'loud' my facial expressions were; he still does, actually. “And how’s that, exactly?”

“I got used to your lavender body wash and lotion and shit before bed.”

I grinned. Sure, it was the lavender. “Okay," I drawled then went on, my tone sugary sweet. "You want me to send you some lotion? They have a pillow spray, too.”

He groaned at my teasing then growled, “No, I want you to send me some _ you. _" He shifted into a sort of gruff sincerity. "Let’s be honest here, I think we both know it’s not the lavender I can’t sleep without, it’s the woman it’s attached to.”

“Babe.” I softened at that, my desire to tease him dampened by his forthrightness. Obviously I missed him too. We both said as much every time we talked. But before he left, we, together, decided that me staying in Boston was the best thing. I needed to get settled into our home and my life there, a life that would sometimes mean going through my days without him there for weeks at a time. 

“No, I mean it. Come down, please?”

“Chris," I sighed. It's not like I _ wanted _to say no. I wanted more than anything to be where he was, wherever that happened to be at any given moment. But neither of us wanted me to become just a tag-along wife; it was important to both of us for me to have my own life and identity alongside but not entirely tied to his. However, my resolve was already starting to crack. That didn't mean I wasn't at least going to put up a fight, though. If nothing else, I wanted to be able to say I tried to be strong. "I know I don’t have an actual, paying job here, but we agreed that I’d try to make meaningful use of my time. I’ve been to the women’s shelter a few times now and I'm starting to feel like I have a place and a purpose there, and I was hoping to start some tutoring at the teen center when school starts in a couple weeks." I had one last pitch, a reminder that our set-up was what he had wanted, too. "What happened to not wanting a wife who just came in and adopted your life?”

“No,” he sighed, “I know. I’m glad you’re finding things that matter to you, really. And I know I can’t just drag you all over the world with me every time I go on location … " He trailed off, making it sound almost more like an open-ended question than a statement. "Right," he breathed heavily as he confirmed his previous assumption, some actual disappointment under the melodrama. "But babe, we’ve been married less than three months and I really fuckin’ miss my wife. I mean, I think we get some leeway this first time.”

By that point my 'arguments' were purely for show. We both knew I would be in Atlanta within the week.

“I miss you too, Chris, god, trust me. But sweetie -”

“Look, if you weren’t so soft and warm and cuddly, and-and _ lavendery _, we wouldn’t be having this problem. But you are, and we are. So please come down. Just for a few days.” He paused, “A week, tops.” Another pause, and when he spoke again it was playful and cute. “Definitely no more than a month.”

***

I've always hated the Atlanta airport. There are always way too many people, and most of them - particularly the employees - are typically less than friendly, on top of that, the airport itself is ridiculously sprawling and it seems every time I've had a connection there I've had to cross the entire airport in a nearly impossibly short time. But I was heading for an area of the airport I'd never actually ventured to before - baggage claim. For the first time, I was actually flying _ to _ , not _ through, _ Atlanta. 

I spotted Chris right away, hands shoved in his pockets, head tilted down slightly toward the floor but eyes looking up through his lashes to scan the room, Patriots cap bobbing as he bounced on the balls of his feet. I picked up my pace, managing to stop myself from running to him but walking as fast as I could through the crowd of people shuffling toward the baggage carousel. He saw me when I was about 20 feet away and he bounced a little higher, almost jumping, then used his long legs to close the distance between us in only a few steps. I dropped the small duffel I used as a carry-on and reached to wrap my arms around his neck. Before I could make it all the way around, he bent to wind his own arms around my upper thighs, his forearms pressing my legs tight against his stomach. He tightened his grip as he stood and I gripped his shoulders for stability, him lifting me and bending backward a little at the waist then spinning, just once.

“Oh my god! What are you doing?”

He grinned, big and cheeky, up at me. “Picking up my wife at the airport.”

“Oh dear god,” I let my head fall back and rolled my eyes as I swatted at the brim of his cap, knocking it a little farther down on his brow, then looked back down at him. “You really think you’re cute, don’t you?”

“I mean …” he trailed off, grinning, and bounced me a little in his arms. “Legs.”

“Oh!” I gasped when he jostled me again, then wrapped my legs around his ribs, and he let me slide down his front just a little until I was settled comfortably with my thighs atop his hips. “What would you have done if I’d worn a skirt?”

He scrunched his nose in 'thought' then shook his head. “No.”

“That’s … not an answer.” I tilted my head and shook it at him a little.

“Sure it is. It’s short for ‘there’s _ no _ way you’d fly down here in a skirt, because you’d never prioritize anything over comfort when travelling.’ And you wouldn’t feel _ comfortable _ pretzelling yourself up into your seat the way you like to do if you were wearing a skirt. You wouldn’t even wear shorts on a plane, you get too cold.”

My mouth opened and closed a couple times. “I -”

“Oh come on,” he tightened his arms around my lower back for a second, “ you act like you think I don’t know my wife.”

I took a second to look around because it suddenly felt way too quiet as he said the word 'wife.' It probably wasn’t any quieter than it had been before, but it felt that way to me. It also felt like every eye in baggage claim was was on us. (Again, they probably weren’t - though some definitely were - but I’d become hyper aware of the attention we were attracting.) “You also know we’re like, surrounded by cell phone cameras right now, right?”

He shrugged. “So? The _ Esquire _ story came out like two months ago." And while not every person in America reads _ Esquire _, the story had, of course, blown up on Twitter and then the rest of the internet, meaning that, by that point, there was probably not anyone on the globe who wasn’t aware of at least the most surprising part of the story - us. "People know who you are. They know we’re married. Let ‘em take pictures.”

“Well,” I leaned in a little, resting my temple against his hat just above his ear and speaking just loudly enough for him to hear, “they’re now also going to know that you, apparently, like to pick your wife up and toss her around like a ragdoll.”

He turned his head so he could speak into my ear the same way I’d done to him. When he did, his voice was lower not only in volume but in tone. “Hey, you wanna be thrown around, just wait till we get back to the apartment. No cameras in there, unless you want there to be.”

The words made my stomach flip and my thighs tightened involuntarily around his waist. “Oh yeah,” I smirked, forcing humor to get around the tension that was building inside me, “a _ Captain America _ sex tape. That’ll go over _ real _well.”

“Aw man,” he groaned, pulling away from me, his voice returning to normal, “thanks for spoiling my fun, Grumpy,” he pouted up at me then winked when he couldn’t contain the smile that broke out at the end.. “Come on,” he dug his fingers into my sides for just a second, tickling me and making me squirm and pull my arms from around his neck to push against his shoulders, “let’s go get your shit and get out of here.”

I smacked his shoulders - not hard, just enough to be an annoyance, really - then tightened my hands around the seams in his shirt when he started to bend forward to put me down. “Wait!”

“What?”

“Kiss.” If we were past worrying about being seen, I was going to get a proper greeting.

“Shit, how’d I forget that?” He didn't forget. He doesn't forget anything, really, and the way the right side of his mouth quirked up was a dead giveaway that he was teasing me. If I hadn't ‘reminded’ him, he'd probably have kissed me as soon as he had my feet on the floor. I just didn't want to wait for that. He tightened his arms around my waist and grinned as I slid my hands off his shoulders to wind my own arms back around his neck, leaning in and stopping just short of being poked in the forehead by the brim of his cap. He just watched, offering no help whatsoever, looking smug, if anything. He whispered, "What's wrong, babe?" He still didn't look the least bit concerned, or sorry, as he watched me consider the logistics of going under the hat to get my kiss from my higher-than-normal position, his smile growing. Finally, after a couple seconds that felt like an hour, he closed his left hand around my hip and shifted all my weight into that arm, freeing up his right hand to come up and pull the hat off his own head, dropping it, backward, onto mine as I curled my nose a little at having to wear Patriots gear. 

His hand fell softly on my cheek and I slid the fingers of my right hand up into the hair at the back of his head, my left arm still wrapped around his neck and that hand gripping his shoulder through his shirt. I inhaled deeply through my nose when his lips finally hit mine. He drew back right away with a quiet _ smack _, then came right back in for a second, longer kiss, his lips slightly parted and nestled firmly against mine. Neither of us attempted to make it any more open-mouthed than that, but, as he so often did, he pushed slightly against me. Instead of pushing back, as I sometimes liked to do, I went with it, but at the same time I closed my lips a little tighter around his bottom one so that I tugged a little when he pulled back.

“Mmmm, much better," I told him, my voice husky, when he pulled away and looked back at me through slightly glazed eyes. "Now we really do need to get out of here before there actually _ is _ a sex tape, because I went from having you in bed next to me every night for two months to not being touched for the last three weeks and I really, _ really _ want my husband.” I loosened my legs from around his waist and slid down the front of his body. 

“Fuck woman, are you trying to kill me? Jesus." He growled and held me in place by my hips when I went to step away from him toward the baggage carousel. “Okay, uh, just, just, stand here for a minute, then we can go get your stuff.” He dropped his head forward and rested his lips on his hat where it covered my forehead.

“Wha- Oh. Right.”

“Right.”

***

Several hours later, I was in the furnished townhouse Chris was renting in one of the suburbs just outside Atlanta, plugging my phone into the outlet across the room from the bed, when I got an Instagram direct message notification from Victoria. She’d shared a post with me.

**people ** _ #DefendingJacob star and #CaptainAmerica himself, #ChrisEvans, and his new wife have largely kept a low profile since tying the knot in June, but they made an exception to that rule earlier today when Evans literally picked up his bride at the Atlanta airport. It's unclear how long the two have been separated while Evans films his newest project, but what was very clear was how happy the newlyweds were to be reunited. The couple shared a kiss and Evans's cap before leaving the airport hand-in-hand. _

There were five pictures total in the post: one of Chris bending to lift me off my feet and me reaching for his shoulders; one of us mid-spin, him laughing and my feet lifted behind me; one of our kiss, both of our eyes closed and a look of peace and contentment on my face; one that looked like a sweet moment with my hands resting on his chest, his on my hips as he placed a kiss on my forehead through the material of his hat (I bit my lip and my cheeks burned at that one); and finally, one of us walking toward the door, Chris pulling my suitcase behind him with one hand, the other arm draped over my shoulders and my arm bent up so that I could lace my fingers with his, Patriots cap still resting backward on my head.

**Author's Note:**

> All stories in this collection will be an anthology of connected one-shots that exist within the same universe; and the officially no longer follow chronological order. They may eventually be reorganized into novel-format, but that would be quite a way down the road.


End file.
